Jan

Over the years, stories have become more than just single bursts of information. These days, there’s as much drama in the consumer technology world as there is sports, politics or your average episode of Days of our Lives. Take SOPA, for example. We’d be remiss of our duties here if we simply reported on what it was, without ever following up on protests, delays, judgments and other vitally important developments. In fact, it’s tough to think of too many stories covered today that don’t correspond with some sort of saga — even the departure of RIM’s co-CEOs represents just a single slice of a far larger tale. For those that follow this stuff 24/7, jumping in at any point in the story is no issue; piecing together the past with the present is second nature. But if you’re actually working during the day, hopping aimlessly into an ongoing saga mid-stream can be downright disorienting. Painful, even. We’ve been working hard to come up with an unobtrusive solution, and we think we’ve found it.

We’ve actually had our Follow The Saga functionality since January of last year — we quietly debuted it with the launch of Verizon’s iPhone 4 — but today’s iteration is far more interactive. We’ve been testing these out over the past few weeks, and today we’re happy to officially introduce them. If you see the badge shown after the break in any post that pops up here at Engadget, just give it a click to be taken to the full saga, and scroll up and down to see related stories before and after the one you happen to ! be looki ng at. We’re hoping it’ll be particularly helpful to those who happen to stumble upon a saga somewhere in the middle, but want to get caught up on what happened prior and where we stand now. As with everything we do, we’ll be continually tweaking and evolving the tool in the months ahead. Enjoy!

Psst… want to see it in action? Have a look under the body of this SOPA post to see how we got to where we are today.

It’s been over fifteen years since MasterCard, Visa and Europay developed EMV technology to make your credit cards more secure, but it has yet to really catch on here in the US. However, MasterCard has created a master plan to help usher in the EMV era and sound the death knell for the magnetic strip. Why? The EMV infrastructure is far more fraud-resistant because each transaction is authenticated dynamically using cryptographic algorithms and a user-specific PIN. That’s why MasterCard plans to help build out the EMV POS infrastructure by April of next year and have its secure e-payment system functioning at ATMs, online and with its myriad mobile payment options as well. For now, the nuts and bolts of how the credit card firm plans to bring its plan to fruition are few, but more details will be forthcoming, and there’s a bit more info at the source and PR below.

It remains to be seen if they’ll be the big game-changer in education that Google hopes they will be, but the company is making some progress at getting its Chromebooks into schools. The latest push is a deal with three US school districts, which will see some 27,000 Chromebooks land in the hand of students in Iowa, Illinois and South Carolina. As CNET reports, South Carolina’s Richland School District Two is making by far the biggest investment of the lot, ordering 19,000 Chromebooks that will be used as part of a three-year program for students in the third through twelfth grades. As for Google itself, it still isn’t being too specific on the total number of Chromebooks now being used by schools, noting only that “hundreds” of schools across 41 states are using them in at least one classroom.

Strategy Analytics has come out with another report on the state of today’s tablet market, which, not surprisingly, remains dominated by Apple. Cupertino’s iOS comprised about 58 percent of the global slate market during Q4 2011 — well ahead of Android’s record high 39 percent share, but down from the 68 percent it commanded during the final quarter of 2010. Android, in fact, has seen quite a jump over the past year, with total shipments reaching 105 million units during the last quarter, up from just 3.1 million last year (Apple, by comparison, shipped 15.4 million iPads during Q4, versus the 7.3 million it shipped last year). On a global level, the tablet market continues to blossom, with total shipments reaching an all-time high of 26.8 million units last quarter, representing a whopping 150 percent increase over last year. Read the full report at the source link below, or head past the break for a more succinct press release.

AT&T is all smiles again, as it announces a quarter in which it managed to sell 9.4 million smartphones. It nearly doubled handset sales from Q3 and managed — perhaps unsurprisingly — 7.6 million iPhone activations, with the majority being Apple’s latest flavor of phone. It looks like the loss of its exclusivity tag hasn’t hurt its sales, with Ma Bell quick to note that it sold far more iPhones than its Big Red rival. Total consolidated revenues were up $1.1 billion from last year, that’s a 3.6 percent increase and it’s up just over $1 billion from last quarter. However, due to the failed T-Mobile acquisition (and the subsequent pay-off) net income was a loss of $6.7 billion, with $4.2 billion of this going to its previously potential partner. Aside from bumper smartphone sales, AT&T’s attributed its revenue increases to a year-on-year increase in wireless subscriptions in all their forms — including wireless internet. An additional 208,000 AT&T U-verse TV subscribers has tipped the viewer count to 3.8 million. See AT&T’s own take on its results below.

We touched on the numbers in our report on Apple’s Q1 earnings, but the company’s throwing out a lot of “record” figures so we thought we’d take a moment to focus on just how its hardware sales stack up. The standout number is, of course, the 37.04 million iPhones sold during the quarter, which is up 128 percent from the same quarter a year ago (and up from 17 million in the previous quarter, a jump of 117 percent). That notably puts Apple back ahead of Samsung, which sold a total of 35 million smartphones in its most recent quarter. And as if that wasn’t enough, Apple’s Tim Cook also said on the company’s earnings call that it could have sold even more if it had more supply.

iPad sales also set a new record with 15.43 million units sold during the quarter, which is a 111 percent jump from the 7.3 million sold a year ago, and a 39 percent increase from the 11.1 million moved in Q4 2011. Once again, however, iPods are the one category that continues to decline in the face of the growth of smartphones. Apple sold a total of 15.4 million iPods — over half of which were iPod touches — which represents a 21 percent decline from the 19.4 million sold a year ago. The holiday shopping season did boost sales considerably from the 6.6 million sold in the previous quarter, though.

Mac sales were also on the upswing, totaling 5.2 million units — a 26 percent increase year-over-year. Breaking things down further, that translates to 1.48 million desktops (including iMac, Mac Mini and Mac Pro), and 3.7 million laptops (including the basic MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro). As for the company’s “h! obby,” t he Apple TV, it rang up 1.4 million in sales for the quarter, and 2.8 million for the 2011 fiscal year. Fans of charts can get their fix after the break.

You’re you, right? Of course you are. If you have an Account, Google knows that too and now, with an updated and streamlined Google Terms of Service, you’re even more you than ever before. The company is consolidating most of its more than 70 separate privacy documents into a single Privacy Policy that is so important it gets capitalized. The biggest change? If you have a Google Account, your information will now be shared across the company’s many services. Scary? Don’t fear — the company is taking this time to re-iterate its pledge to never sell your personal information, never share it externally and to continue to support the Data Liberation Front. Viva transparency.

It wasn’t just RIM that had designs on the limelight during the football action last night. Comcast commercials appeared over the NFC Championship game last night, thoughtfully playing over the climax of the match ‘twixt the Giants and the 49ers. Frustrated fans who missed out on parts of the fourth quarter and overtime promptly began voicing dissent on the company’s support forums. The Washington Post has a quote from spokesperson Amiee Metrick indicating the problems were due to a possible “equipment failure” at a local Fox affiliate, WTTG, resulting in the ill-timed ads reported in Washington D.C. We’ve heard that of customers receiving a $10 credit and an apology, but it seems unlikely to soothe the brow of those — like the person who recorded video of the incident you can see after the break — thinking of switching to FiOS.

Update: We’ve received a response from Comcast (included after the break), and updated the post to clarify the apparent breakdown was at local Fox affiliate WTTG.

After finally getting the OP-1 up for order last January, Teenage Engineering is getting its second product to market — Oplab. The latest offering is meant to compliment its slick synth, but we can see plenty people falling in love with it on its own. The Oplab is a tinker kit and DIY platform, akin to Arduino or Microsoft’s .NET Gadgeteer, but designed explicitly for generating and manipulating sound. The main board, which retails for $299, is home to a trio of USB ports (two of them hosts), three MIDI connections (one in, one out and one sync) and a pair of CV in and CV out jacks. There’s also a bank of switches for changing settings and a host of connectors for plugging in various sensors. The Swedish company is offering a number of add-ons for $49 apiece: an accelerometer (Flip), a piezo microphone (Tap) and a pressure sensor (Poke). Strangely enough, there’s also a $149 a sneaker that has a rubber pouch that you can slip one of the aforementioned sensors into. Hit up the source link for more details and to order yours now.

Google must be feeling generous: it donated Sky Map to undeserving armchair astronomers and it’s letting the great unwashed get at its App Inventor development platform. The software toolset was cooked up in partnership with MIT: a web-based interface that lets anyone build Android apps without getting elbows-deep in code. Those Massachusetts king-geeks won’t be accepting submissions just yet, however: it’s still got to work out how it’s going to deploy the public server and foster a “robust and active open-source project” under its new name: the moderately unimaginative MIT App Inventor.

Digital Consigliere

Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.